


Manful

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Boston Legal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-12-15
Updated: 2004-12-15
Packaged: 2018-01-25 01:47:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1625075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Brad Chase really doesn't like Alan Shore. Too bad everyone else does.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Manful

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Greensilver

 

 

_To Greensilver -- I really thought I wasn't going to finish this one in time, which is funny, since I had started it before I received my Yuletide assignment in the hopes I would get Boston Legal to work with. Hopefully you are having lovely holidays, and you enjoy this present._

**Manful**

They don't like each other. Technically, most people don't like Alan; that's nothing new. But Brad isn't used to this sort of instant dislike. The prejudice is baffling, unfounded. No one's ever just not liked him before -- not like this -- not right away, without real reason, and without any warning.

"You want to know why I don't like you," Alan says. Jesus Christ, the man's a mind reader. "No," Alan continues, pouring himself a cup of coffee, "don't ask me how I know -- I can see it in the clench of your manful jaw. Or perhaps it's the furrow of your manful brow -- well. No matter. Do you want the simple reason or the one that can give you back all those sleepless nights spent wondering why it is I'm just -- so -- mean?" Over his coffee, Alan's face -- which must have been, when he was younger, the sort with devastating cheekbones -- has assumed the Smug Shore Expression, cocky tilt of his head and all.

"Actually," Brad says manfully, "I was just coming in to get some coffee, but thanks." He moves past Alan to the sugar. At the same time, it shouldn't bother him so much. Respectively, he just doesn't like Alan's type -- whatever that is, some combination of smirky and smug and so self-satisfied. But what doesn't make sense, what really gets to him, is how someone could just dislike _Brad's_ type. Wholesome. Polite. A good guy. Who doesn't like a good guy, for God's sake?

"You're like a ken doll," Alan says. It's nothing new. It's Alan's favorite comparison. "That's what I called you. Well, no, let's be fair -- call you. It's what I call you; it's very apt. Actually, I'm rather proud of it, but that's not the point. Where was I?" He fixes Brad with eyes that burn. "Oh yes." He has Brad trapped somewhere between sugar substitute and a dark green tie. "I never said it was an insult."

Brad forgets the cream and forgoes a witty response in favor of getting the hell out of there.

"I rather like ken dolls, myself," Alan's voice follows him. "So do a good many little girls!"

***

"I'd swear you were following me," Alan says the next day, this time over lunch. "You've got hound-like instincts; I'm impressed." His salad is clearly designer. His napkin is tucked into his collar. Brad feels his jaw muscles shift before he can stop the surge of aggravation. "Oh, Brad," Alan tuts. "Sit down. Eat your sandwich. It's one of those things I'm sure you also do manfully, perhaps in a blonde fashion, so by all means, begin." He gestures, like a friendly snake, a worm smiling up from the center of an otherwise excellent apple. Against his better judgment, Brad sits. Or perhaps his knees buckle. He unwraps his sandwich and takes a manful bite. "Well you don't need to look as if I'm going to _bite_ you," Alan says. "I have a perfectly good salad, and I'm quite satisfied. But _my_ , that _is_ a manful sandwich, isn't it."

"Roast beef," Brad says, after swallowing.

"Mm," Alan says. "Delicious." He levels lettuce into his mouth and finishes with a crunch.

He is the most disturbing man Brad has ever met.

***

"Tell me something," Alan asks, "when Sally left you, how'd that go?"

All Brad wants is a nice cold beer after a real hard day. There was a time when he enjoyed law and didn't get the headaches -- when he went home excited and went to bed happy, not worn out and half-dreading the morning to come. It doesn't mean he's lost the spark. He's just gotten older. This sort of disillusionment is to be expected with age. Besides, you hear _Denny Crane_ enough times in one day and you start to wonder if you haven't maybe gone insane. So what Brad needs -- what Brad _really_ needs -- is to go to a bar before he goes home, to have a respectable one cold beer, to relax for a bit in the company of total strangers. He doesn't need Alan Shore sitting down next to him, smelling a little of tequila, and a little of some fruity cocktail, and a little of Sally Heap, and acting totally sober anyway.

"That would be easier if you were even a little drunk," Brad says, and laughs uncomfortably.

"Don't worry; I can get drunk later, and still remember none of this conversation in the morning. So tell me -- when Sally left you, how'd that _go_?"

"Amicable," Brad says. "None of your business, but it was amicable." He pauses, then has to add, "I knew you weren't right for her."

"Oh," Alan agrees, "so did I." He fixes Brad with one of his patented looks, disconcerting, Brad realizes, because of the unsettling wealth of knowledge behind it. No one really dares to look that smart anymore; it's become socially unacceptable. But Alan wields it like a weapon, as if to spell it out for the less confident. 'I am intelligent and I don't give a damn if you know it.' "You see it's why she's broken up with me."

"Neat little excuse, isn't it?" Brad takes a manful swallow of his beer.

"Terribly." Alan's glass is one of those cold, wealthy rockers, with the traces of gin left in it. Brad tries to picture him with a cigar and housecoat, feet up, drowsy. "Well, it doesn't matter all that much, now does it. You're here, I'm here, and she's -- somewhere else, devastatingly attractive and _dangerously_ single."

"We're not friends," Brad blurts out. He can't help himself. It's just too much. "We don't have to talk about this."

"I'm sorry," Alan says, "was I interrupting something _very_ pressing?"

Brad looks around himself. The picture isn't good. Here he is, in the company bar, drinking alone. There Alan is, making what may just be Alan overtures, recently dumped, though no less smug. Perhaps, Brad thinks, an epiphany unexpected, this is Alan's way of being friendly. Maybe that's why he attracts so many women -- something to do with inaccessibility and a brittle shell, something most women can't seem to get enough of. Brad finds himself imagining the real Alan Shore, too clever for his own good, too smart as a child to fit in, building up walls, creating a vast unpleasant network of techniques to protect himself, and now, sitting here, an elbow almost touching Brad's trying to be friendly.

"No," Alan says, "stop doing that."

"What?" Brad asks. The man's got to be a mind reader.

"That thing you people do, to explain other people you don't quite understand -- or, excuse me, don't _want_ to understand. I'm not making small-talk, I don't really want to be buddies -- I don't have buddies and, I know this may seem odd to you, but I'm quite content not having buddies, actually -- I simply have an honest question, which you have answered, and now you're psychoanalyzing me. Like, I might add, every woman I have _ever_ dated since nineteen eighty seven."

"I am _not_ ," Brad begins.

"Yes yes, of course," Alan acquiesces, "you're the Ken in _this_ relationship."

***

Brad is beginning to think he's the one who really doesn't like Alan, and Alan is simply indifferent. Brad has innumerable reasons to really not like Alan, reasons that make his head get red and his temple pound and his words forget to breathe. That's embarrassing. That's another reason to really not like Alan. He's the anti-hero -- probably the anti-Christ -- and Brad's a good guy. Apparently, no one really likes a good guy. Or, women really don't like a good guy. When it comes down to a system of likes and don't likes and _really_ don't likes, Brad's on one end of the spectrum doing all the liking and the disliking and the really disliking and receiving only handfuls of indifference from all ends. Lori, for example, who is good and wholesome and, Brad used to think, a whole lot of blonde apple pie. And smart as a whip, and determined to do good. And does a whole lot of liking and really not liking Alan Shore at once. Of course, there's also Sally, and Tara, both gorgeous, intelligent women, both with equal amounts of like and really don't like for Alan. That only makes Alan more enticing, that combination of utter hatred and total desire. Like fireworks. Actually really like fireworks.

Brad _cannot_ believe it.

Or perhaps Alan is that gambler who just never loses. He sits at the tables all day, money drawn to him and all the girls on his shoulders. You always wonder where the guy who just never loses goes at night. You'd like to think it's somewhere lonely but in reality, all the girls go back to his room with him. If you're lucky, in the morning some casino's goon smashes his head in a dark alleyway -- but Brad never thinks like that. Brad shakes his head and shaves and goes to work, where Alan leans over to him in the elevator and says, "Don't worry, I remember _nothing_ about last night."

At least it can't get worse.

***

It gets worse. The Santa Claus Debacle, as Brad will forevermore think of it, makes work a yet more horrifying prospect. He sacrificed his integrity for the one triumph. He would have spent years and years, countless years, making it up to anyone who cared. What he needed was to bring Alan Shore down a peg. What he got was pointy elf shoes and a pointier elf hat. Something about it just isn't fair. No one man can possibly be that lucky. No one man can possibly be that morally bankrupt, that ridiculously illegal, that fantastic a lawyer. Brad takes off his pointier elf hat and sits down next to the fridge in the office to stare stupidly at the wall. Somewhere just outside the door the news of who won the bet and who lost and who got to be Santa and who's wearing the pointier elf hat is spreading through the office like wildfire. Life isn't supposed to work this way. Brad Chase recalls a time when he won every case he was supposed to win, and dated all the beautiful women, and when things didn't work out he was good to them anyway. In those days, Denny Crane treated him like the firm's rising star. In those days, he had his respect and his integrity, a deadly sexy combination.

Now, there's some adopted -- well, okay, asshole! -- pushing his way into everything that used to be comfortably Brad's own. When Brad thinks that Alan is going to be everywhere from now on, at the office parties and at board meetings and in the elevator and at Brad's favorite bar and just _everywhere_ , Brad wants to throw up. Alan Shore is like that classy fruitcake who keeps being sent every Christmas. He's the cat that came back the very next day. He is stubborn, immobile, clever, attractive, underhanded and irresistible. He is also in the doorway.

"Oh, Brad," Alan tsks. "I am sorry about the bet. On the plus side, you can always pull a homophobic judge on me next time; I've used up all my frequent Sharpton points." Alan moves across the room, searches through the refrigerator, opens a Perrier. Brad harbors a fleeting fantasy of leaping out of the chair and bludgeoning Alan to death with the Perrier bottle. It passes. Fortunately, Brad is a very disciplined man.

"Look," Brad says, "I'm a disciplined man, Alan, but--"

"Please, please," Alan interrupts, "I don't know how I do it either. It's natural. Instinctive. _Winning._ " He flashes a brief, toothy smile.

Brad just makes a pained face and shakes his head.

"And here I thought we'd gotten friendly," Alan continues. He sets the bottle down. "I'm not quite sure what I have to do to win you over, Brad. Here I am, pulling your pigtails, showing off on the monkey bars, but all you do is sulk in the sandbox! Should I come over -- should I kick down your sandcastle and put sand in your underwear?" Alan's lips twitch. Brad wants to tell him he's already kicked down the sandcastle and put sand in his underpants, but somehow he doesn't want to start using Alan's language. There's a purpose for it and it's just as unsettling as Alan is.

"Look," Brad says again.

"Manful word, 'look'," Alan interrupts again. "And the way you say it -- let's just say your jaw is well-suited."

"Look," Brad says, one more time.

"That's it, Bradley," Alan encourages, "let it out. The anger. The manful rage. All those looks." It's a namby-pamby way of saying _bring it on_ , Brad has to admit. At least, he hopes that's what Alan's trying to say. Brad, feeling more formidable than he looks in stripy socks and a green elf tunic, stands. The chair thunks over behind him. Brad still isn't sure what expression Alan's using -- some combination of come hither and hit me baby one more time and the more appropriately taunting. Brad bears down on him, all muscle and army training. All manful jaw and raging gaze.

"Look," Brad says. For once he's going to be the one doing the cornering. He actually has it easy this time, Alan pinned in front of him against the counter, and no one else around to hear the screams. Alan looks up at him, not quite the picture of jolly old Saint Nick he could be, all things considered.

"Look," Denny says from the doorway. There is a long, silent pause. Brad wants to be dead. It's like that dream you have, where you're naked in front of all your classmates in the eighth grade. The meanest grade of all. "You're not," Denny begins, " _you know._ " Another long, silent pause. " _Are_ you?"

"Ho-mo-sexuals?" Alan asks. Brad cringes. Denny cringes. Alan doesn't look less jolly or more jolly. "The dread three-words-word?"

Denny's brows rearrange themselves.

"Of course not," Alan says.

"Good," Denny says, brows relaxing. He turns to leave. Another long, silent pause. "Denny Crane," he adds.

"There, you see?" Alan says, patting Brad on the green-tunic chest. "Not that bad at all." He shifts Santa suit around his middle. "And may I say you have pectorals of _steel?_ "

 


End file.
